BBC: Video Nation and Creative Archive

Had a good look around the Video Nation site at the BBC today. There's lots of great stuff there. People all over the UK filming themselves mostly and also each other, on topics of interest to them at the time. They range from a young girl telling us what she likes about Christmas to a woman describing her husband's decision to die and the circuitous route to get there. It's a great insight into UK lives. The audience can browse, search by keyword, send a page by email or add their thoughts and responses.

While the material is shot by the participants themselves, it is edited at the BBC which is working to keep the content compelling, but puts a lot of work back of the Producers. They'd be good people to talk to about how they see the future of this sort of projects - and what the possibilities are for people uploading their own edited material, how the content can be selected or organised by the Producers, and how more connections could be made between the mini-docos.

In a recent podcast I heard Paula le Dieu from the BBC talking about another interesting project; The Creative Archive, which should open up the BBC's massive archival resources for people to "rip, mix and share". There will be no Digital Rights Management requirements wrapped around the materials, and peer to peer distribution will be facilitated. Unfortunately and somewhat inconsistently, the project is currently restricted to the UK.

dfilm_moviemaker

dfilm_moviemaker is a cute application. Choose the characters and context, and put words in their mouths. Email them. Made my first dfilm. Now I have to work out how to save (and blog) them.

Interactive films?

This Samsung site, Anyfilms has a go at providing an interactive film. It follows the common model of providing lots of pieces you can sequence yourself to make your "own" film, but it seems more sophisticated than the ones I've seen before. Creativity is limited because you have no idea what the pieces are as you arrange them, and even the title is selected for you. Am still looking for sites where the viewer's own content can be brought into the mix...

First steps

I talked to Mark Pesce on Friday. He is just finishing up at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and he has an interest in documentary as well as being a futurist and digimedia whiz. He talked about citizenship journalism being leading area in user generated content, and I found an online BBC film on this topic. Mark suggested looking at citizen journalism on Wikipedia. There's a lot there.

I checked out the Nokia short films (15 seconds?) made for mobiles as well as short films made using mobiles. A good reminder how simply a good story can be told.

I also found this delightful online film using google earth and bloggers all over the world.

So, first blog up and running! With help from Alex Hayes, mobile device enthusiast, mentor and colleague at the Department of Education and Training.